1st Course: Hors D’oeurve
Wells Tower’s Salmon Cutlets, Ravaged and Burned
Ingredients: 1 salmon filet, 2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 cloves garlic, fresh dill, 2 lemons, salt, male angst, Viking helmet
Put on your Viking helmet. Savagely cut salmon filet into long strips and then mercilessly mince garlic cloves and shred dill. Adjust your Viking helmet with a dashing sneer. Combine olive oil, garlic, dill and a pinch of salt. Place salmon strips in a baking dish and coat with oil mixture. With a tinge of regret, recall how you were pulled away from home to ransack a town your evil band conquered last month. In a rusty skillet, cook salmon cutlets on med-high heat for about 5 minutes or until cooked through. Adjust your helmet. Cut and squeeze lemons over salmon. Serve hot with a blood-curdling scream and unapologetically stomp out of the room.
2nd Course: Soup
Joyce Carol Oates’s Black Water
Ingredients: 1 ½ pounds of boneless lean beef – cubed, 6 cups beef stock, 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil, 1 cup of cooked barley, 4 celery stalks – chopped, 6 carrots – chopped, 4 cloves of garlic – minced, 6 green onions – chopped, salt and pepper, thyme, 1 philandering senator, 1 precocious young woman, an automobile with easy access to a dark body of water.
Unfortunately, you are not going to have the opportunity to try this soup. You have to give all the ingredients to the woman, let the senator drive into the lake and leave her to die. Yes, he’s a terrible man. For this course, you and your guests can think about how lovely the soup tastes…as the black water fills her lungs and she drowns.
3rd course: Amuse Bouche
Jeff Mann’s A Brief History of Scallops Wrapped in Barbed Wire
Ingredients: ½ pound of scallops, ½ cup of mayo, 1 tablespoon butter, 2 teaspoons Tabasco sauce, 2 teaspoons Srirracha sauce, as many habanero peppers as possible.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Take those ingredients and mix that shit, bake that shit and then spear the shit out of each scallop with a tooth pick. It doesn’t matter if you serve the scallop with barbed wire or not. Just remember: it is supposed to hurt.
4th course: Small Entrée
HG Well’s The Invisible Dish
Ingredients: good luck finding them.
5th course: Main Entrée
Anais Nin’s Little Birds Confit
Ingredients: 4-6 sumptuous chicken legs with thighs, 2 quarts of gooey duck fat, 8 tantalizing garlic cloves, 4 well-endowed sprigs of fresh thyme, sexy salt & pepper, 1 fabulous fennel bulb and a handful of nubile cherry tomatoes.
Like any good love affair, this takes patience and a lot of innuendo. Caress those innocent little chickens as you place them tenderly into a Dutch oven, covering them with sliced garlic, thyme, salt and pepper. Let the duck fat ooze over everything and let it melt for about twenty minutes on the stove. Wearing your most tantalizing outfit, watch the oven preheat itself to 200 degrees. You’ll need 8-12 hours to let the chickens cook and moan in ecstasy as you pull them out of the oven, your heart filled with their sensual aroma. About ten minutes before serving, slice up the fennel bulb and toss in a pan on high heat with tomatoes and a dollop of olive oil. Purr lightly while gently pawing at the nearest guest with your rump seductively displayed. Assemble everything on serving dishes. Once plated, garnish with a rose blossom and remind your guest that they can’t eat until the flower has been plucked.
Note: serve with a side of Tristan Taormino’s Luscious Endive Salad.
6th course: Assorted Cheeses
Shirley Jackson’s Lottery of Cheesy Delights
Ingredients: assorted soft and hard cheeses, a small folded piece of paper, a pile of stones.
This is an interactive course and one of the highlights of any dinner party. Set up is very easy. Assemble your cheeses onto a plate, ensuring there is one helping per guest. Fold the paper and fit it under one serving, ensuring that it is well hidden from plain view. The stones should be separated into several small bowls and distributed to each attendee. When the paper is revealed, that guest has won the lottery! Then the fun begins as they are stoned to death. Remember, etiquette says that the host always gets the first throw.
7th course: Dessert
Cormac McCarthy’s No Cake for Old Men
Ingredients: none. (You have enough to do. Just pick something up from the store and call it a day.)
First, make sure you’ve left enough time to clean up the carnage from the cheese course. Second, I hope you’ve chosen well. Anything Cormac McCarthy tends to be bathed in blood and tension. So, red velvet cake is a good choice. At this point in the evening, most of your guests will have fled and vowed never to return. So, cut yourself a piece and pour a glass of wine and know that you’ll never have to do this again.